The Business Book

How can you create a successful brand? What makes a great business leader? Why do some firms fail while others prosper? Throughout history, business gurus have offered ideas and solutions that have shaped and sharpened the world of business and commerce.

Written in plain English, The Business Book unpicks brilliant business thinking with pithy explanations that cut through the jargon, step-by-step diagrams that untangle theories, and witty illustrations that play with our ideas about the global marketplace.

Whether you're an entrepreseur starting up a business, a CEO looking at the bigger picture, or a consumer curious about what makes business tick, you'll find plenty to inspire you in this book.

• Start Small, Think Big
  Starting and Growing the Business
  • If you can dream it, you can do it
    Beating the odds at start-up
  • There's a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap?
    Finding a profitable niche
  • You can learn all you need to know about the competiton's operation by looking in his garbage cans
    Study the competition
  • The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows
    Stand out in the market
  • Be first or be better
    Gaining an edge
  • Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket
    Managing risk
  • Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.
    Luck (and how to get lucky)
  • Broaden your vision, and maintain stability while advancing forward
    Take the second step
  • Nothing great is created suddenly
    How fast to grow
  • The role of the CEO is to enable people to excel
    From entrepreneur to leader
  • Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken
    Keep evolving business practice
  • A corporation is a living organism; ity has to continue to shed its skin
    Reinventing and adapting
  • Without continuous growth and progress, success has no meaning
    The Greiner curve
  • If you believe in something, work nights and weekends — it won't feel like work
    The weightless start-up
• Lighting the Fire
  Leadership and Human Resources
  • Managers do things right, leaders do the right thing
    Leading well
  • None of us is as smart as all of us
    The value of teams
  • Innovation must be invasive and perpetual: everyone, everywhere, all the time
    Creativity and innovation
  • Dissent adds spice, spirit, and an invigorating quality
    Beware of the yes-men
  • No great manager or leader ever fell from heaven
    Gods of management
  • A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way
    Effective leadership
  • Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results
    Organizing teams and talent
  • Leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do
    Make the most of your talent
  • The way forward may not be to go forward
    Thinking outside the box
  • The more a person can do, the more you can motivate them
    Is money the motivator?
  • Be an enzyme — A catalyst for change
    Changing the game
  • The worst disease that afflicts executives is egotism
    Hubris and nemesis
  • Culture is the way in which a group of people solves problems
    Organizational culture
  • Emotional intelligence is the intersection of heart and head
    Develop emotional intelligence
  • Management is a practice where art, science, and craft, meet
    Mintzberg's management roles
  • A camel is a horse designed by committee
    Avoid groupthink
  • The art of thinking independently, together
    The value of diversity
• Making Money Work
  Managing Finances
  • Do not let yourself be involved in fraudulent business
    Play by the rules
  • Executive officers must be free from avarice
    Profit before perks
  • If wealth is placed where it bears interest, it comes back to you redoubled
    Investments and dividends
  • Borrow short, lend long
    Making money from money
  • The interests of the shareholders are our own
    Accountability and governance
  • Make the best quality of goods, at the lowest cost, paying the highest wagest possible
    Your workers are your customers
  • Utilize OPM — Other People's Money
    Who bears the risk?
  • Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom
    Ignoring the herd
  • Debt is the worst enemy
    Leverage and excess risk
  • Cash is king
    Profit versus cash flow
  • Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked
    Off-balance-sheet risk
  • Return on equity is a financial goal that can become an own goal
    Maximize return on equity
  • As the role of private equity has grown, so have the risks it poses
    The private equity model
  • Assign costs according to the resources consumed
    Activity-based costing
• Working WIth A Vision
  Strategy and Operations
  • Turn every disaster into an opportunity
    Learning from failure
  • If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses
    Leading new markets
  • The main thing to remember is, the main thing is the main thing
    Protect the core business
  • You don't need a huge company, just a computer and a part-time person
    Small is beautiful
  • Don't get caught in the middle
    Porter's generic strategies
  • The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do
    Good and bad strategy
  • Synergy and other lies
    Why takeovers disappoint
  • The Chinese word "crisis" is composed of two characters: "danger" and "opportunity"
    Crisis management
  • You can't grow long-term if you can't eat short-term
    Balancing long- versus short-termism
  • Market Attractiveness, Business Attractiveness
    The MABA matrix
  • Only the paranoid survice
    Avoiding complacency
  • To excel, tap into people's capacity to learn
    The learning organization
  • The future of business is selling less of more 
    The long tail
  • To be an optimist … have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose
    Contingency planning
  • Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable
    Scenario planning
  • The strongest competitive forces determine the profitability of an industry
    Porter's five forces
  • If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete
    The value chain
  • If you don't know where you are, a map won't help
    The capability maturity model
  • Chaos brings uneasiness, but it also allows for creativity and growth
    Coping with chaos
  • Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astonish the other
    Morality in business
  • There is no such thing as a minor lapse in integrity
    Collusion
  • Make it easier to do the right thing and much harder to do the wrong thing
    Creating an ethical culture
• Successful Selling
  Marketing Management
  • Marketing is far too important to leave to the marketing department
    The marketing model
  • Know the customer so well that the product fits them and sells itself
    Understanding the market
  • Attention, Interest, Desire, Action
    The AIDA model
  • Marketing myopia
    Focus on the future market
  • The cash cow is the beating heart of the organization
    Product portfolio
  • Expanding away from your core has risks; diversification doubles them
    Ansoff's matrix
  • If you're different, you will stand out
    Creating a brand
  • There is only one boss: the customer
    Make your customers love you
  • Whitewashing, but with a green brush
    Greenwash
  • People want companies to believe in something beyond maximizing profits
    The appeal of ethics
  • Everybody likes something extra for nothing
    Promotions and incentives
  • In good times people want to advertise; in bad times they have to
    Why advertise?
  • Make your thinking as funny as possible
    Generating buzz
  • E-commerce is becoming mobile commerce
    M-commerce
  • Trying to predict the future is like driving with no lights looking out of the back window
    Forecasting
  • Product, Place, Price, Promotion
    Marketing mix
• Delivering the Goods
  Production and Post-Production
  • See how much, not how little, you can give for a dollar
    Maximize customer benefits
  • Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exists to be reduced
    Lean Production
  • If the pie's not big enough, make a bigger pie
    Fulfilling demand
  • Eliminate unnecessary steps
    Simplify processes
  • Every gain through the elimination oof waste is gold in the mine
    Juran's production ideal
  • Machines, facilities, and people should work together to add value
    Kaizen
  • Learning and innovation go hand in hand
    Applying and testing ideas
  • Your most unhappy customer are your greatest source of learning
    Feedback and innovation
  • Technology is the great growling engine of change
    The right technology
  • Without big data, you are blind and deaf and in the middle of the freeway
    Benefitting from "big data"
  • Put the product into the customer's hands — it will speak for itself
    Quality sells
  • The desire to own something a little better, a little sooner than necessary
    Planned obsolescence
  • Time is money
    Time-based management
  • A project without a critical path is like a ship without a rudder
    Critical path analysis
  • Taking the best from the best
    Benchmarking

Talk about seeing your MBA in a condensed format! This was a short version of the my MBA, explained in very short articles and done very well.

I am not sure if you could appreciate it fully without an MBA background, but it is very much to the point and covers in reality nearly everything in the base curriculum of an MBA (excepting Finance).

I really liked it and will go back to it from time to time, to remind myself of some concepts.